We’ve updated our Terms of Use to reflect our new entity name and address. You can review the changes here.
We’ve updated our Terms of Use. You can review the changes here.

Christian Wolff: 3 String Quartets

by Christian Wolff

/
  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

    includes pdf liner notes
    Purchasable with gift card

      $9.99 USD  or more

     

  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    Includes unlimited streaming of Christian Wolff: 3 String Quartets via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 4 days
    Purchasable with gift card

      $15.99 USD or more 

     

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.

about

World premiere recordings.

Starting with his music of the 1960s and early 1970s, with works such as For 1, 2 or 3 People (1964), the <i>Prose Collection</i> (1968–71), and Changing the System (1974), Christian Wolff (b. 1934) quietly re-invented chamber music. He created music in which the activities of the performers— timing, cueing, assembling and selecting materials—were foregrounded. Although to some extent these activities were always a part of classical music, Wolff opened them up for creative decision-making by the musicians themselves.

Charles Ives began to develop a different conception with (among other works) his String Quartet No. 2 (1913). It portrays four individuals who come together to have a discussion that turns into an argument (presumably over politics) and then its transcendental resolution in the mountains. With Ives and then others from the American Experimental Tradition (including John Cage), chamber music starts to become a place where differences are unleashed.

Given his exploration of the ontology of "people making music together", the string quartet, laden as it is with the tradition of unity, might not at first seem to be an obvious fit to Wolff’s sensibilities. But his quartet music stems as much from Ives and Cage as from the European art music tradition. The four characters of Ives become four people playing music. In one piece he simply calls them “2 violinists, violist and cellist.” Sometimes they are asked to coordinate like a traditional quartet. But at other times (often in the same piece), they are pushed to the point of dissolution. Here we find a music that allows for the spontaneous expression of four musicians who are bound together by something more than the rule of the bar line.

credits

released October 1, 2021

Quatuor Bozzini
Clemens Merkel, Alissa Cheung, violins; Stéphanie Bozzini, viola; Isabelle Bozzini, cello

license

all rights reserved

tags

about

New World Records Brooklyn, New York

Anthology of Recorded Music, Inc., which records under the label New World Records, was founded in 1975.

We are dedicated to the documentation of American music that is largely ignored by the commercial recording companies.

contact / help

Contact New World Records

Streaming and
Download help

Shipping and returns

Redeem code

Report this album or account

If you like Christian Wolff: 3 String Quartets, you may also like: